Presented to the market as a wire binding solution for small to medium offices, The GBC W400, formerly available as the TL200, is a binding system that uses double o, twin loop, double loop, and wire o binding spines. In this review, we delve into the various features of the W400 and provide you with a listing of what we believe the machine s strengths and weaknesses are, so you can make a more informed purchase.
Strengths:
1. At twenty sheets, the W400 has a pretty impressive punching capacity for its size. We found that it met that capacity pretty easily and believe that it would be a great choice for smaller to medium type use, meaning short run publications. If you are going to need a machine to produce huge numbers of documents, you will likely want to look at something with an automatic punching mechanism.
2. We really liked the wire holder that is located on the back of the W400. It is meant to hold the spine of the document in place while the user hangs pages onto the document. We found that this design is much easier to use than a lot of other machines on the market that utilize a damp style holder for the wire.
3. Call us shallow, but we also appreciate the aesthetics of the W400. It is a sleek and stylish looking machine, built on the platform of some of the older GBC / Ibico binding units. As always, they are designed for easy use and to last a long time, and they will always look good in any office.
Weaknesses:
1. The chief issue that we had with the W400 was with the wire closing mechanism. It works great out of the box, but we found that it might not stand up very well to heavy use. After a while we discovered that either the drive chain or the plastic gear started slipping, resulting in inaccurate or uneven closing, or in some cases we can see how the wire closer could stop working altogether. It is very possible that eventually you will need a standalone wire closer to accompany this machine.
2. While the W400 is great for punching letter size documents and covers that are oversized, the lack of disengageable dies makes it impossible to cleanly punch sheets that are half letter, A4, legal, or custom sized. Oddly enough, there appears to be a small compartment that looks as if the user should be able to disengage pins, but that feature appears to have been taken out of the W400.
3. As with most to all of the 3:1 pitch binding systems out there, you will not be able to use the W400 to bind documents that exceed nine sixteenths of an inch, or roughly one hundred twenty five pages. If you think that you will need the capacity to bind larger or smaller books, there are machines on the market that punch both two to one and three to one, such as the Akiles WireMac Duo.
Author Resource:
Jeff McRitchie is the designer and Director of Marketing for http://www.mybinding.com .He has written over 500 articles on binding machines,binding covers,binders,laminators,binding supplies,laminating supplies,paper handling equipments,index tabs, and shredders.
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